Right? Absolutely. I mean, I think that's, that's harder and harder for most Americans to feel, that this agency actually protects us as individuals, it feels like such an outdated concept. But I was also really struck by two other things. The first being this acknowledgement, that trust in institutions is, is waning, and that that's such a massive concern. And I'm always like, Oh, my God, he admit it! You know, God. Like, you did that, you know, your policies and your mistakes. I mean, let's not forget, the CIA played a massive role in the intelligence that led to the Iraq War. Yeah. You know, there has been some history, you know, historical work on that, that has made the case that it was a kind of rogue intelligence unit within the CIA, that was stove, what's called stovepiping intelligence, which is, which is when, you know, it's kind of an it's like what you're talking about with the limited hangout, but it's an intentional omission of facts that the agency has about a situation to support a particular policy agenda. Stovepiping is like cutting out all the stuff that disconfirms the hypothesis you want to run with, in this case, in this case, the hypothesis that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam Hussein had clear connections to al Qaeda, all of these things that were used by the Bush administration to justify the war in Iraq. But for that kind of information, to make it to the president, to actually underwrite policy, it has to have a lot of institutional support within the agency. So I kind of refuse to go fully in on the stovepiping theory. Like I think that the CIA has acknowledged mistakes they made in that situation, but they haven't fully reckoned with how much that reflected, like, an agency wide belief in the necessity of the war, and then seeking out any evidence to back that up. Yeah. And, you know, that's to say nothing about torture, you know, which the CIA has acknowledged now, which the Obama administration acknowledged. which even you know, the former CIA director, Gina Haspel. Acknowledged. Yes, right, unapologetically. So, unapologetically, she was involved in the torture program. And, and nevertheless, you know, Democrats voted for her when Trump appointed her as CIA director. But the bottom line is that, like, the CIA, even just since 911, has done plenty of publicly known things that have contributed to our widespread disgust and distrust towards institutions, right, so to talk about that, as if it's just an objective fact they have to deal with and respond to, I think, is bizarre.
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